This invention relates to a method for coordinating actions among a group of servers. More particularly, this invention relates to a method for coordinating the authentication of clients, aggregation of information, group transactions, and multi-phase commits across a group of servers. The preferred embodiment of the present invention relates to commerce on the World Wide Web.
Electronic commerce is increasing exponentially, especially on the World Wide Web. Many businesses have set up virtual stores on Web sites that allow consumers to shop and purchase products on-line. As a logical progression from these individual virtual stores, virtual malls have also begun to appear on the Web.
As with real malls, virtual malls provide an opportunity to benefit both businesses and consumers. Businesses potentially benefit from their visibility on the mall. For example, a virtual store on a virtual mall may catch the attention of a consumer who originally comes to the mall to buy goods from another store. Consumers may benefit from the opportunities for integration and coordination of goods and services on the mall. A virtual mall may provide, for example, an integrated directory of the goods and services of many virtual stores. In addition, a virtual mall may provide a single point of authentication for all of the virtual stores on the mall. A virtual mall could also coordinate group transactions involving multiple stores.
Thus far, the virtual malls that have appeared on the Web have taken one of two approaches. First, some malls provide a Web page with hyperlinks to independent virtual stores. Second, some malls have provided multiple virtual stores within the same Web site. These latter malls have utilized such systems as the IBM World Avenue system (http://mer.shop.ibm.com) and the Netscape Merchant System (http://home.netscape.com/comprod/products/iapps/capps/mersys.html).
Each of these approaches has disadvantages. The first approach does not provide any coordination among the individual stores except for the collection of their URLs. The second approach, while providing coordination among individual stores, is restrictive in that the virtual stores must be implemented and managed within a single Web site. Thus, to join a virtual mall using the second approach, a business with an established virtual store on the Web may be required to significantly change its implementation.
Accordingly, there is a need for a method for coordinating multiple, independent virtual stores that can be distributed across multiple Web sites.
The present invention is directed to a method for coordinating actions among a group of servers. The preferred embodiment for the present invention relates to coordinating multiple virtual stores on the Web, but the present invention applies to other forms of networked communications as well.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a method for coordinating single authentication of a client among a set of stores, such that a client, once prompted for authentication information, can execute transactions at any store or across any subset of stores without further prompting for authentication.
It is a further object of the present invention to coordinate the integration of information from multiple stores. For example, it is desirable to integrate the items contained in the shopping basket of each store a client has visited and to provide a single display of this information to the client. As another example, it is desirable to allow a client to specify keywords for a search, send the search request to any subset of the stores, and send the combined search results to the client.
It is a further object of the present invention to coordinate requests for group transactions involving multiple stores. For example, a client may request a group purchase, which involves an xe2x80x9call-or-nothingxe2x80x9d purchase of a set of items across stores. Such a purchase might involve, for example, a matching jacket and slacks from different stores. This type of request may be used in conjunction with a single or multi-phase commit across the stores.
The architecture of the present invention is a client-server environment having a server group including one or more participating servers and one or more controller servers, where each participating server can communicate with at least one controller server. In this environment, the present invention is directed to a method for coordinating actions among the servers in the server group, which comprises the steps of: (1) communicating between a client and at least one of the servers in the server group using a protocol that has limited or no defined procedures for passing state information between the client and the servers; (2) transmitting a request for an action from the client to one of the servers; and (3) communicating among a plurality of servers with at least one controller server coordinating actions of at least some of the servers in response to the request.
Preferred embodiments of the present invention include coordinating the authentication of a client during a conversation and coordinating a group transaction requested by a client. To coordinate the authentication of a client during a conversation, a preferred method according to the present invention comprises the steps of: (1) communicating between a client and at least one of the servers in the server group using a protocol that has limited or no defined procedures for passing state information between the client and the servers; (2) transmitting a request for a first action by a client to a server that requires authentication; (3) providing client identification information by the client; (4) verifying the client identification information by one or more controller servers; (5) generating client authentication information by one or more controller servers; (6) maintaining the client authentication information by one or more servers; (7) utilizing a means by one or more servers for preserving the client authentication information in the conversation; (8) transmitting a request for a second action by the client to one of the servers that requires authentication; and (9) using the client authentication information preserved in the conversation and the client authentication information maintained by the servers to authenticate the client.
To coordinate a group transaction requested by a client, a preferred method according to the present invention comprises the steps of: (1) communicating between a client and at least one of the servers in the server group using a protocol that has limited or no defined procedures for passing state information between the client and the servers; (2) transmitting a request for an action requiring participation by a plurality of servers from the client to one of the servers; and (3) communicating among the servers with at least one controller server coordinating the actions of the plurality of servers in response to the request.
These and other features, aspects, and advantages of the present invention will become better understood with regard to the following detailed description, appended claims, and accompanying drawings.